Trying something a bit different for a change, the folks at Google Earth sent camera-tethered balloons and kites into the sky to see what kind of images could be captured sans satellite. The results are beautiful, in superhigh resolution.

The best part is, Public Laboratory (who partnered with Google on this project) has developed an open source balloon mapping toolkit, allowing anyone with a digital point and shoot, and about access to a few other items (balloon, helium, line, soda bottle) to take their own aerial earth photos, too! [Google Lat Long Blog]